Monday, September 1, 2008

Welcome to Issue Twenty One of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes wars that are born limbless and hates klieg lights at the construction site. It craves juicy apples and makes cute little sounds when I get tangled in the seaweed. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into a romantic scene with a smooth jazz background. Issue Twenty One is no exception. This month is filled with wave-proof photographs, along with seeping-glue art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, an intriguing music maker and one magical book review and you've got the possibility of a bug bed infection. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like the inside of a fumigation suit. Or he only shoveled compost on weekends. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in cashews. So forget about your set of mundane surgical scares and get busy...

Poems than none other islooks at it when readingDon’t say jay nay pa stop

An H say

Ice Age Spring Break

When than spring Aprildraft of age hathparsed to the rootvalue of all glaciers,retreat man far south,caves of Iraqi Qumbeach of South Padrelongen folk goon wild,pills grim ages wrackshiny faces every raceshave got a friend inCoke ’s the real / godcan’t see the folksbeneath the new faces:breakers make white foam(“semen of the gods”),be excellent to eachanother party on dudes.

The Same Poem

Like maybe we're all writing it? Like how everybodypoints out the word she almost wrote instead? Likeeverybody's talking about Cornell boxes? Likeminiaturization would save us? Like homophonicprocedures cured the security pageant? Like excessfor access? Like everyone's unique but me?

Or how you read the sign as "piso mojito" & thinkyou've drunk too much? Or see the sheets of rain inTimes Sq. & think of Ridley Scott? And can't stop it?Like it were your poem? This has been going on foryears. Like brevity for bit? Or how everyone growsyoung when the old folks give up & go home?

The addictable play of forms - how a logo imparts itspower if you wear it? Like swoop for swoosh? Like yourpoem on the ticker, the jumbotron, the crawl? Likemaybe it is, by someone else? Like parapraxis werethe new metonymy? Aw shit I meant parataxis. And?

Personal Poem

Every day I become more like me.I’m about to be killed, right?

damaged persons never forgive(n) - ?More on this theme later.

Your money will run out beforeyour life, making suicide

unnecessary. In the mean time,don’t touch me I’m radio

activewith a half-ass life60 million years.

A Blog Hole

Instead of reading and writing blogs, I could be reading andwriting _______. But really, I wonder how muchimagination and thought are funneledinto this form that formerly wasexpended on things likeessays, poems,books, &c. There arewriters who do some of theirbest writing for their blogs. Andthere are others who read everything(or appear to do so), including blogs. Andwhat does happen when nobody can afford theutility bills any more? The missing link is the link after the last.

That they are only glimpsed in silhouette,And seem something else at first—a swallow—And move like new tunes, difficult to follow,Staggering towards an obstacle they yetAvoid in a last-minute pirouette,Somehow telling solid things from hollow,Sounding out how high a space, or shallow,Revising into deepening violet.That they sing—not the way the songbird sings(Whose song is rote, to ornament, finesse)—But travel by a sort of song that ringsTrue not in utterance, but harkenings,Who find their way by calling into darknessTo hear their voice bounce off the shape of things.

-first published in Verse Daily

Variations On An Old Standard

Come let us kiss. This cannot last—Too late is on its way too soon—And we are going nowhere fast.Already it is after noon,That momentary palindrome.The mid-day hours start to swoon—Around the corner lurks the gloam.The sun flies at half-mast, and flags.The color guard of bees heads home,Whizzing by in zigs and zags,Weighed down by the dusty goldThey’ve hoarded in their saddlebags,All the summer they can hold.It is too late to be too shy:The Present tenses, starts to scold—Tomorrow has no alibi,And hides its far side like the moon.The bats inebriate the sky,And now mosquitoes start to tuneTheir tiny violins. I see,Rising like a grey balloon,The head that does not look at me,And in its face, the shadow cast,The Sea they call Tranquility—Dry and desolate and vast,Where all passions flow at last.Come let us kiss. It’s after noon,And we are going nowhere fast.

Mornings I Walk Past The First Cemetery Of Athens

Like a widow, every day the grey Dawn comesTo the Proto Nekrotapheío, and sweeps the crumbsOf Night from tombstones, and the marble busts.The stone cutter in his workshop contemplates,Chisel in hand, the blank face of clean slates.The waitress at the café mops and dusts.A priest sits at his newspaper and tarriesOver the headlines and obituaries.Soon, the mourners gather there to drainThe thick black liquid to the bitter grain.At the Office of Endings, a hunched man taps his thumbs.Four diggers play a hand of cards to killA little time; two withered florists fillThe old foam wreaths with new chrysanthemums.

-both poems first published in New Criterion

Amateur Iconography Resurrection

Jesus is back—he's harvesting the dead.He's pulling them up out of the dirt like leeks—By the scruff of the neck, by the wispy hair on the head,Like bulbs in darkness sallowly starting to grow

From deep down in the earth where the lost things go—Keys and locks, small change, old hinges, nails.(That's why the living beseech the dead, who knowWhere missing objects lie.) Jesus has a grip

On Adam by the left wrist—he will not slip—And Eve, by her right. They're groggy and don't understand,They died so long ago. With trembling lip,Adam surveys the crowds of new people. And Eve

Looks up the emptiness of her limp left sleeveFor the hand that was unforgiven and is no more,Ages since withered to dust, and starts to grieveThe sinister loss, recalling the heft in that hand

Do what you will with the dirty pictures of your first lover:The wind can still bang a screen door off its hingesAnd simple myths, like mirrors, will continue to bootlickIn the back of your mind. It seems natural to fall in loveAt a funeral, the way a body shivers under weight,The way those drinks stain the collars of your shirts.Look all you want, you can piss into the face of oblivion,You can turn it on, turn it off again. Staring at the sunMay take your vision, but the light will be infiniteAnd repeating. When it seems to go, stare hard at nothing,Think of the dirt in your body, and it will be light again.

Radio Girl

Driving the Natchez Trace, I tune the radioto sixteen ten AM for Parkway info. It's coldout, but the girl's voice is sticky as swampas she describes four hundred miles of sunken footpaths,Indian mounds, and lush Southern scenery. This dottedline goes all the way to Nashville. I consider going,gassing up, and driving north. Maybe the radio girlwill be waiting in Nashville, maybe she's lonelyand drunk, scanning her Silvertone radiofor someone like her, someone trying to describethis much road in these few words, the Decembercold creeping calmly through her doors,past her sweater to her Tennessee bones,where we can both brace ourselves for the weatherto turn itself warm, for the leaves to budtheir insistence back onto the windswept trees.

-both poems first published in South Story

Love Poem

A baseball crashed through my kitchen windowand landed in the coffee cup you found in the dirtand mailed to me. Everything arcs. I looked eastand read the words you wrote in cursiveabove the red seam. Yes: what happens behind glass,stays behinds glass. When the sun is just overhead,the roads between here and there turn to soil,grab hold of the land, and begin to bend.

-first published in Konundrum Engine Literary Review

Damaged Pigments

Milk bottles, vein-paper, soapboxes, chicken bones all strungAlong telephone wires where squabs peck needle-holesInto the dense white, seeking marrow that will be carpet dustWhen it touches air. It’s Thursday so the barking dogsOutside the windows are prerecorded and will loopUntil it starts to rain and morning notices noonStill sleeping on the back of a derelict’s burnt hand. LoavesOf peanut bread, stolen from the hospital, were foundBobbing in the pear-glistening bend of the river, at least fiveMiles away—that’s why the plastic leaves are being blownInto the downtown air from a reversible electric vacuum,Silently—the sky seemed smudged before it turnedOat-colored. Yes—it’s Fall, despite what our calendarsSay. Nodding, let us cart cords of wood to Carolina’s tomb.

-first published in Tarpaulin Sky Poetry

Question About Death At Breakfast

The Frosted Mini-Wheatsgo bad August third next year.Two percent milk expired yesterday.According to deathclockdot com, I'll go bad Aprilsecond, two thousand fifty-two.I pour the milk over the cereal,see my reflection in the spoon,and wonder if I, too, might be goodfor a day (or two) after I'msupposed to expire.

The boat sprawls on the vast waste of heat.He drops into the water, slow and heavy.It is easy, he thinks, as though fallingfrom a sky brimming with rain, high abovea dark landscape. The wreckcrusts across the yellow floorunder the hollow gong of the sea.A fish drifts up to a window, pauses,decides to turn back into the room full of boredom.

His head is locked in a glass cage.He can hear the lonely chatter of crockerythrough the pipe. A smile breaks into his face,he is floating like a burning angelacross the cold, glowing valley of sand.

-first published in Poetry Australia

Awakening

she wakes into the peach-glow bedroomlike a jet / the orange lipswrithing on the taste of bitter lightthe flood-green eyes / exploding hair(the avalanche of morning from the curtainssluices white across the sheets)

At the House of the Rising SunIn the twenty-fifth year of my ageI find myself a Ford at Bomaderrythe tank dry, starved betweenone collision and the next garage.Adelaide flames and howls under the horizonlighting up a petty testament of waste.Apart from the moment of accidental visionthe dull grey trees stand aboutinclined to olive, drab, cold, gathering in trembling clumpsunder the lowering field of cloud.

You are not alone in this Southern desert;love, like a wounded elephant, terrible and patheticstorms the deadly streets to hunt us down.

-first published in Transit Magazine

Small Animal Poem

Okay, there’s room for onemore small animal in my life,behind the bad future, as long as hedoesn’t complain. His fate will be secret;I am not to blame.

If you imagine you are not solucky today, rehearses the other,the guilty animal, look at tomorrow —the good days are gone, in future everythingyou do goes wrong,

you will be broken down. Butthe new arrival, the blamelessanimal, I warn him, is not to knowthat his future’s just begun, nor how soonthe damage will be done.

-first published Overland

Two Poems For Mr. Stevens

1

I was of two minds,like a hotel roomin which there are two people.

2

I do not know which I prefer,the beauty of inflectionsor the beauty of innuendoes,her brief glance through the crowd,or her looking-away.

The first is the driving heat drafting upfrom the cow dung in the meadow,settling on the limbs and leaveswhose husky thirsts derive from want.Second is the fruit on these limbs,the apples, cherries, and pearsthat rock left and right in the slight breezebringing relief, and fragrance from the flesh.The last is the rain that gives way to frost,when the rest of the garden is pickedand the stubble has gone to mulch,when the robins arrive and peck for seeds.

Summer, The Oval Office

A woman with long legsand ten men withoutarms or earsthree childrensmiling at the camerasten menin wheelchairsand ten with tiesgathered hereand thereby the windowlooking out at the rose gardenair-conditioner on highlogs burning in the fireplace

The Window

The distance opensto the seathe boat-moon glistensNear the headlandsabalone poachers listenfor the sound of craftas the poetlooking from the hillbeyond the sealistens to the roarof surf on sandthe sea caves suckingin his breath

The Price Of Good Medicine

My fish is sickI take itto the hospitalwhere the nurse laughsand saysDon't be concernedhe'll live

I take himto the moviesto seeif he will laugh

The ticket seller saysa quarter for kidsand a nickel for the fish

Tiny Destiny

His own tiny destiny at hand, and skinthe color of dusk, with the small glowof autumn in his mind, and a trailing windthat blows him from the meadow, he graspsthe small coin of dream and goes to war.It's so beautiful, he says, when he tells youwhy he loves it. The desert is as lonelyas a wolf, and the packs of maraudersare as dangerous as flint. There is a fusein the eyes of the enemy and life is short.Someone is hiding in the flickering lightof the hallway and he doesn't knowif the staccato sounds are in his heador the fresh wounds of nightmares.

I say my name to the mailbox. Then yours. Hers.Even her name and still nothing is there,no stern accounting of debts, no date whenthe penalties will come again, no creditoffered in seriousness understood by machines.Mouth of air. Mine and the box,strung with vines, a hidden thing, vinesgoing up from the ground on nothing,you’d think. Red flag I never raisewhen there is something required of meand the check is scrawled lateor the letter signed, pen in mouthand heart in throat a few times every year.To be fair, not so often. Brokennessnever lasting all that long. Even in your nameand her name, in the absenceby which we’re taught best, no totemis found. In the road, so softin the heat it’s pliable, the cars berthwider than I could ever need,rolling past in the other ditch almost.Some stop, offer help, helpthey’ve not even decided is needed,shown by their rattled wayback into the car. Away with words and miles.Sometimes I wait a long whilebeside the mail not thereand imagine even more of it,its spill, its rustle like water rollingfrom one’s hands. Whensomething comes with its deadpostage, embossed by cancellation,I lean my face to its mouthalmost to kiss it, almost to thank its purpose,and with my lips carry itdown and in. The same penswhich spill my nameslit each envelope open I’ve pulped softwith my tongue.Blue threads throughwhatever words accordion forth.Sometimes a letter. Places I’ve beenand remember. Places I’m unlikely ever to see.Strange children. Minor injuries.The freight of the bodyin motion. Once all petals. Once only seeds.

Faith

Meaning, I am separate. The speakers lurchmusic I can’t love, I can’t tell youI love you. The window is obviousand cold and the climate’s breathfogs it up, the world outside hindered.I think that is the word I wantbut it may be that I cometo you in the inconvenient darknesssaying I have not meantmyself for a very long time. It may bethat I stub my life blackand nearly weep, limpingaway. It will be funny one day,wait and see. This woundand the next made nothingat all by time’s mad gush of speed.We’ll laugh, though now allthere is the slush fillingthe gutter up with inconstant diamonds.I owed you something,once, and you were goodenough to bear meforgetting you. Your handsolder than you were,even in the night, graspsome, close.Outside, the world isstupid with whitenessand cloud wet. I can’t thinkof numbers meantto identify me or cities by which I’m ruled.I can’t think of thiseffect my breath makesof the air butby it I can tellyou that I am not dead,or that I’ve stumbled into the cold,thinking of thisdream.

Invitation

Paul Guest, I am looking forward to your birthdayand the long chain of fitful celebrationswhich will follow and be brokenby something like inconsiderate deathor the envelope of oblivion. Paul Guest,I'm looking forward to your arrival,your flight, your train, your steamer rockingin on a lucky wave. When will yoube here, Paul Guest, with your combsand pockets and mad fits of despair?Paul Guest, when will you ever be happy?When will you sign treatiesand agreements and accordsand truces tied up with ribbon,when will you decide to live peaceablywith yourself, Paul Guest?When will you open cans of soupthat would have kept forever,forever in their vacuums of salt,and stir them on to a fireand think yourself at lastan imposter under the grave starsno more? When will you fallasleep and be full and not longfor a distant woman, your wordsno signposts for the way back to whereveryou were, Paul Guest?What will you say, Paul Guest?No one knows. No one ever hasspoken the right thingor walked away not hatinghis mouth for the sake of the airthat was in it, that wouldn’ttake shape, keep it, or at least fall into quiet,which is an endless water.Paul Guest, you have triedto vanish, a thousand times, Paul Guest.

Permission

Solicitous weeks now I’ve winked at the doorknob,my exit and return a pattern speakingof some secret I shared with the worldonly by entering into it, declaring myselfthe cargo of airlines and buses,practicing rope knots and recitingalien slang, dyeing my hairuntil I was the kin of woodland creatures,Romulus gone wrong, Remus unaccounted for,and Rome nowhere beneath me,through the twill of cloudsdecaying by the day. Gumdrop,I called you when you sleptor when you wrestledwith duvets, giggling like a wild bell,impossible not to love,a factual seduction. And all that while,I said I knew pokerfaces but all I knewwas how I swam to youin the mirror or how the ducks by the lakebristled and were doubledover the water, in flight,no fan of the names I lent themor the crusts of bread I balled up for them.All I knew were dish towelsand every remittance of breathI paid to the air in apologyfor your absence. As though I had that right.But, still I did, and do,and every cloud I swearis consolation. Every cloudand half-tended gardenand nook of odd darknessand every syllable of praiseand even the rare sweet mealor song which served the minutes well.Listen: I’m singing.

Poem Written To Replace Another

There was a long sentence I wanted to sayin the dream, about life in America,about the literature of apocalypseor living in caves, or living within earshotof trains. Which is to say I don’trecall a thing that I dreamed last night,the color of anything, the tenebrous custard of clouds,the water that fell in shapesfrom the elm trees. Really, what I’m thinkingtonight is there is nothingin all the flat world which would satisfy me.Not food and not love and noEpicurean kink involving bothand in this I am trying to feel onlya little sad. Slightly broken.Returnable, still, even to the ones I loved,their darling, imperious airs,their hair in careless garlandsannouncing one more morning or one last.They went about in the immediacyof dreams. They said, or did notsay, I am the tacit light of the stars.A long time it took meto make sense of thatand longer still their absences,which felt like nothingof the sort, though through them I could heartrains warning the milesof their torturous approach.It seems beautiful,to think now of that soundwhich is all immensity and inevitabilityand other abstractionswhich only call to mindeverything that is too easy to be forgotten:that winter is not endlessor without charm,at least for those who find it charming,and I am not one,hovering beside the thermostatwith a safecracker’s impenetrable intent.Love, it is cold out there,is not what I meanwith every adjustment of the worn dial,but I might say it,were you to ask,stranger who doesn’t know me at all.

The Spoonbridge and Cherry was commissioned in February 1985 by the Walker Art Center as a gift of Frederick R. Weisman in honor of his parents, William and Mary Weisman. The stainless steel and aluminum sculpture is painted with polyurethane enamel and stands 29 ft. 6 in. x 51 ft. 6 in. x 13 ft. 6 in. (9 x 15.7 x 4.1 m) in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, MN.

The sculpture was designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Claes Oldenburg is best known for his ingenious, oversized renditions of ordinary objects, like the giant "soft" three-way plug and overturned bag of french fries in the Walker's own collection. He and Coosje van Bruggen, his wife and collaborator, had already created a number of large-scale public sculptures, including the Batcolumn in Chicago, when they were asked to design a fountain-sculpture for the planned Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

The spoon had appeared as a motif in a number of Oldenburg's drawings and plans over the years, inspired by a novelty item (a spoon resting on a glob of fake chocolate) he had acquired in 1962. Eventually the utensil emerged--in humorously gigantic scale--as the theme of the Minneapolis project. Van Bruggen contributed the cherry as a playful reference to the Garden's formal geometry, which reminded her of Versailles and the exaggerated dining etiquette Louis XIV imposed there. She also conceived the pond's shape in the form of linden seed. (Linden trees are planted along the allées that stretch before the fountain.)

The complex fabrication of the 5,800 pound spoon and 1,200 pound cherry was carried out at two shipbuilding yards in New England. The sculpture has become a beloved icon in the Garden, whether glazed with snow in the Minnesota winters or gleaming in the warmer months, with water flowing over the surface of the cherry and a fine mist rising from its stem. It was installed at its permanent site on May 9, 1988 and inaugurated on May 11, 1988. Find out more at: www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com

Description: "Erin Elizabeth Smith's debut book of poems, The Fear of Being Found, is adamantly itself. Smith's nervy, plangent lyrics question and reject assumptions, outfit themselves for uncertainty in a world where wind is "young and bitter" and "cicadas sound like a factory of lathes." Personal and metaphysical, mythic and immediate, these poems are elegant as a pair of white gloves and fierce as a set of fangs." — Angela Ball

Twenty-nine year-old Mindi Abair was born on tour into a musical family, and was playing piano by the age of five. Within three years, she was playing saxophone and writing songs. She made her way through Berklee performing all kinds of music from jazz to rock and R&B. Upon moving back to Los Angeles, Abair started her own band. She also took on session work with artists as diverse as the Gap Band, Adam Sandler, Mandy Moore, John Tesh, Teena Marie, and the Backstreet Boys.

During this time, she worked on creating her own sound and released her debut disc in 1999. The Backstreet Boys connection really paid off for her, and her website and CD (entitled Love) took off. The year 2000 saw the release of the follow-up, Always and Never the Same, and shortly thereafter Abair signed with GRP Records. A sophomore effort, It Just Happens That Way, was issued in 2003. "Lucy's," "Save the Last Dance," and the album's title track went on to impact Top Ten radio.

A year later, Abair returned with Come as You Are, her second set produced with her writing partner, Matthew Hager. In 2006, Abair released Life Less Ordinary, which featured guest vocals from Lalah Hathaway and Keb' Mo', and also performed at the Governors Ball, the official Oscars afterparty. The following year, she appeared on guitarist Peter White's — with whom she had performed frequently — Christmas album, but 2008 saw a return to her solo material (and an introduction to Abair as a singer) with Stars.

Abair also plays the flute and keyboard, and she is the host of the syndicated radio program Chill with Mindi Abair, which focuses on chill out music. She took over hosting duties for the show, then known as Chill with Chris Botti, from previous host Chris Botti in 2007. Find out more about this aritst at ther website: www.miniabair.com

Ever since feministsmade madness phallocentric,Roz feels guiltyabout her psychotic breaks.It’s not that she doesn’t wantto join hands with her sistersagainst the patriarchy. It’s justshe can’t stop listeningto the grass. The rubof blade on fresh-cut blade,like knives being sharpenedon steel, scrapes insideher ears. His namerepeating: Cesar Israel.Grass speaks the languageof original sin, a split-tongued,lying hiss. She breaksas always, along the same lines,a priceless vase,once glued.

Lessons From Zombie Movies

As soon as the thirst of the first undeadfor the blood of the living begins,money becomes worthless. One cannot bribea zombie. The first thing to dowhen the world goes apocalyptic on youis arm yourself with a crossbow. Nevergo anywhere quiet alone. There will bea small band of survivors with at least oneNavy Seal. You must make sure he has turnedagainst the government he once servedbecause it is always, somehow,the government’s fault. Alaska will bethe only possible refuge. People who aredead are not smart, or even fast,but they are persistent. They will lurchalong behind you, slow as decomposition,but don’t be fooled: they are oddlyeffective at catching you thoughyou may run and run. You must blowoff their heads, which apparentlykills them even though they are undead.Finally, you will realize thatyou have been running flat out fortwo and a half hours, and that your fat,whopper-eating, American asswould have been bitten beforeyou ever got up from in frontof your television.

Smelling Smoke

All the long night I woketo choke again on the taste of you,

your bitterness stucklike a pill in the back of my throat. You

settle like fine gray ashin every pore and crease of me

until I struggle to breathein the cloying black. I

keep seeing the kitchenof my childhood home

the day we went back after it burned.Rain had mixed the dark dust

into a thick sludge, a pastethrough which we plodded,

fiery-eyed.Movement changes somehow

in memory and nightmare, slowsto an exaggerated trudge.

You still move inside me,gut me like a fire

tearing througha tinder-dry farmhouse.

Clitorodectomy

It is language soaked sterile,the rusty cutting away of wordslike offending labial flesh. A wayto talk without wincingabout what is -

five generationsof Nigerian mothersholding a thrashing girl-child, slicing her

for feed, the fish humming in my walls at night.I had meant to have my mother's fingers

around my throat for being a girl or meant to beatmy own daughter

with a walking stick, all the mirrors I looked into,reflections missing.

-first publised in Kenyon Review

Edward Hooper Study I

Office At Night

Her buttocks ripen in their double hump.She lingers by the filing cabinet. Her blue dresswraps her body, as oceans wrap rounded cliffs.

She wishes the man at the desk were a flambeedbanana that she might nibble. One handlodged inside the filing cabinet, the other waits

to enter, settling against the open drawer.The handle rubs her breast. She looksdown at the carpet, the color of an unripe

mango. His silence washes her feverishbody. As for the man, he likes how the lightmimics the mood of a hospital corridor.

He is afraid to look at her, to consider the fieldbetween her breasts. He is frightened of her lips,tart surface of a glossed heart. He thinks of green

ledgers with vertical red lines, commas, zeroes,numbers lit by the banker lamp's gaseous glow.He returns to the number eight. Its curves make

him think of her bareness, the way her bodymight stiffen in fever, just for a moment, beforeshe falls on him, the way a washrag spreads in a basin.

Edward Hooper Study: Hotel Room

While the man is awaytelling his wifeabout the red-corseted woman,the woman waitson the queen-sized bed.You'd expect her quietin the fist of a copperstatue. Half her face,a shade of golden meringue,the other half, the darkof cattails. Her mouth even -too straight, as if she doubtedher made decision, the waywomen do. In her hands,a yellow letter creased,like her hunched back.Her dress limp on a green chair.In front, a man's satcheland briefcase. On a dresser,a hat with a ceylonfeather. That is allthe artist left us with,knowing we would turnthe woman's stone into ours,a thirst for the selfin everything-evenin the sweet chinksof mandarin

Joseph Harrington: he is the author of Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern US Poetics (Wesleyan, 2002). Re: Cancergate: An Amneoir : “Since the dates of the Watergate scandal and the dates of my mother’s last illness coincide almost exactly, I find it impossible to separate the two.” Harrington’s poems have appeared recently in First Intensity, Tarpaulin Sky, and on screen at the University of Victoria, B.C. He teaches at the University of Kansas. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas and edits a blog called Blog of Myselfs at http://josephharrington.blogspot.com

A. E. Stallings: she was born in 1968 and grew up in Decatur, GA. Her poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry series (1994 & 2000) and has received numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Eunice Archaic Smile Award, received the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award. She composed the Latin lyrics for the opening music of the Paramount film, Sumof All Fears, and has made a new verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for Penguin Classics. Hapax (Northwestern) received the 2008 Poet's Prize. She resides in Athens, Greece with her husband and their small son. Visit her website at www.geocities.com/aestallings

Adam Clay: he has been published or has forthcoming poems in Black Warrior Review, Milk, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Free Verse, storySouth and elsewhere. He is the co-director of the Arkansas Writers in the Schools Program and is an editor of the online poetry journal Typo Magazine. His first poetry collection is The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). A chapbook, Canoe, is available from Horse Less Press. Born and raised in Mississippi, he holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and an MA from The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He now lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his wife, Kimberley. His website is www.adamclay.org

John Tranter: he is the founding editor and publisher of the free quarterly Internet literary magazine Jacket. For more than twenty years he has presented his work at readings in more than forty venues in the USA, England and/or Europe. He has published ten volumes of poetry, and his work has been published widely in British and US literary magazines including the Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, Boulevard, Parnassus: Poetry in Review,Verse, the Times Literary Supplement,TinFish, the London Review of Books,Poetry Review (UK) and elsewhere. His most recent poetry collection is Urban Myths (UQP, 2006). He lives in Sydney, Australia. Visit his website at www.johntranter.com

Kees Terberg: he invested his savings into a property with regional ambiance and atmosphere between Bordeaux and the Pyrenees. When he learned that the name was "L'Art de Vivre", he knew that he had stumbled upon the route towards turning his dream into reality. He started his career in catering, qualified in Hotel Management, but remained a passionate photographer. His photographic work is internationally admired and he is a sought after photographer when it comes to landscape, wedding and portrait photographer. He lives in Les Leves et Thoumeyragues, France. You can find more of his work at www.les-leves.com

Leonard J. Cirino: he is the author of sixteen chapbooks and twelve full-length collections of poems from numerous presses since 1987. He has devoted four decades to reading, writing, editing, and publishing poetry. His chapbooks include The Truth Is Not Real (Adastra Press, 2006), Ambiguities (AA Press, 2007), and The Ability To Dream (Phrygian Press, 2007). His manuscript, Scattered Rhymes, has been accepted as a chapbook by Cervena Barva Press for 2008. He lives in Springfield, Oregon, where he listens to folk, rock, jazz and blues music. To read more of his poems visit his blog athttp://pygmyforestpress.blogspot.com

Paul Guest: he is a 34 year old writer and poet who likes music and movies. His first book, TheResurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, won the 2002 New Issues Prize in Poetry. My second book, Notes for My Body Double, won the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. In 2009, Ecco Books will publish his memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, and his third collection of poems, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge. He teaches English and Philosophy as a visiting professor of English at the University of West Georgia and resides in Carrolton, GA. Visit his blog at http://paulguest.blogspot.com

Trinity Rivard: he began winning a few national drawing contests while still in elementary and junior high school and has spent the past 25 years developing the skill. In 2004 he started painting in oils and acrylics and has had numerous exhibitions since. He finds his inspirations in a variety of art forms, including pop art, minimalism, and abstract expressionism. He lives in Tampa, FL. Find out more about the artist and his work at his website: www.trinityrivard.com

Rachel Custer: she likes to be thought of as a professional student, reluctant adult, and practiced confessor. There is no obvious indications that she is religious though. What is known is that her poetry has appeared in Prick of the Spindle and longs to be published elsewhere. She works in the arts industry and lives in a town called Mishawaka, IN which is not even within walking distance of Oz. But you can follow the yellow brick road to more of her poetry at her blog called The Confessional: http://confessor-rachel.blogspot.com

Victoria Chang: her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry,Threepenny Review, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry 2005 and elsewhere. She is the editor of an anthology titled: Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (The University of Illinois Press). She has received a BreadLoaf Fellowship and Scholarship, a Taylor Fellowship from the Kenyon Writer's Workshop, a Sewanee Fellowship, and a Ploughshares Cohen Award for best poem of the year. Her first book of poetry, Circle (Southern Illinois University Press), won the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry. Her second book (part of the VQR Poetry Series) is due in the Fall of 2008 (University of Georgia Press). She resides in Southern California and works as a business writer. Find her website at www.victoriachang.com

Closing Notes: The editor would like to thank the contributors for the use of their work. Each contributor reserves their original rights. Look for the next issue of CSR online on Oct. 1st.

Blog Archive

I spent much of the 80s working as a freelance photographer in Europe. I returned to America in 1990. Then in 1995, I made a life-long dream come true when I traveled around the world for eight glorious months. Instead of taking pictures, I kept a journal, which eventually led me to what I feel is my "true calling". My poems have appeared in numerous national and international literary magazines both in print and on the web but I still peddle my time as a private tutor, which is not as bad as it sounds. Fact is, I no longer want to live on an iceberg, which is a good thing since they seem to be disappearing.